A Change In The Argentine Senate

 

SITUATION REPORT

Argentina: Senators Leave Government Alliance, Form New Bloc

1 MIN READFeb 23, 2023 | 20:09 GMT

What Happened: Four Argentine senators announced on Feb. 22 that they were leaving the ruling Everybody's Front (Frente de Todos) coalition to form a new bloc called Federal Unity, the Buenos Aires Times reported Feb. 23. The senators said they were leaving the government's alliance because the country's social, economic and political situation has created new demands. 

Why It Matters: The senators' departure leaves the government coalition aligned with President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Kirchner with only 31 seats in the 72-seat Senate. This will make it harder for the government to achieve the 37 seats for a quorum necessary for the Senate to deliberate. As the defections come months ahead of Argentina's October general elections, they could also decrease voter confidence in Everybody's Front.   

Background: Vice President Kirchner was found guilty of fraud and banned from holding office in December 2022, in another recent blow to the Everybody's Front coalition.

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Pablo Neruda Was Poisoned

 

‘Death, Inside the Bones’

CHILE

World-renowned Chilean poet and Nobel Prize laureate Pablo Neruda died of poisoning just days after the 1973 coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, according to a recent forensic report that challenges the state’s long-held position about the writer’s death as having been “natural”, Quartz reported.

An international forensic team delivered the report to a top Chilean judge this week after examining bone and tooth samples from Neruda’s exhumed body.

Neruda’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes shared some of the details of the report, saying that scientists found clostridium botulinum while examining Neruda’s remains, a neurotoxin they said caused the poet’s death.

He added that the findings validate what he has been saying for 50 years – that his uncle was poisoned in a hospital shortly after the coup that removed socialist President Salvador Allende, NPR added.

The report – which will become available to the public next month – challenges the official version that Neruda died of prostate cancer. There have been suggestions that Pinochet poisoned Neruda – an ally of Allende – to prevent a political challenge from the left-wing writer, a critic and member of the communist party.

Public pressure over the cause of death increased in 2011 when the writer’s driver publicly recounted Neruda telling him that he had been injected with a foreign substance into his stomach just hours before his death.

Neruda’s relatives are hoping to open a criminal investigation into his death, which observers say would make him one of more than 40,000 political dissidents who were brutally tortured and murdered during Pinochet’s tenure.

Peru-Revolt Of The Incas

 

Revolt of the Incas

PERU

The Peruvian city of Juliaca recently felt like a warzone.

“Burning pyres of rubbish and bullet-pocked walls … troops holed up in the airport with AK-47s and riot shields, waiting for a truce that has no date to come … a mayor holding court behind the broken windows of a vandalized city hall,” wrote the Guardian, describing the scene after a recent clash between security forces and protesters.

Scores have died in the violence. Police no longer police the streets of this Andean city in southern Peru, focusing their efforts on controlling the Inca Manco Cápac International Airport named after the founder of the Inca civilization. Anti-government rebels patrol the city instead.

The fighting is part of a conflict that has flared up between anti-government rebels and the central government in the capital, Lima, under President Dina Boluarte, who replaced the now former President Pedro Castillo late last year for allegedly staging a coup. Boluarte, who won office with Castillo in 2021, started her career as a leftist but has since allied herself with moderates and conservatives, as the Financial Times explained.

Castillo was a leftist champion of Indigenous groups and the rural poor, but failed to realize his campaign pledges of redistributing wealth from the country’s natural sources and faced numerous corruption allegations. His defenders at Counterpunch argue that his supposed coup was his attempt to block right-wing elements in Peruvian politics who were using the organs of the state to undermine his democratically-elected administration.

In a sign of how instability has marked Peruvian politics, Boluarte is the country’s sixth president in six years, noted the Associated Press.

Boluarte recently declared a state of emergency covering cities and regions throughout the South American country, allowing the military to bolster police, suspending freedom of assembly, and imposing nighttime curfews, according to Voice of America.

But the rebels-cum-protesters have shown few signs of backing down. They have promised to blockade copper exports unless Boluarte resigns, new elections for Congress are held, and officials initiate a process to revise a pro-free market constitution adopted in 1993, reported Reuters, adding that polls show the public agrees with many of their demands.

Many protesters want to improve the social, political, and economic conditions of Indigenous communities. Carrying the square, multicolored Wiphala patchwork flag, that serves as the banner of those communities in the Andes, they harken back to age-old divides in Peru. “I am Inca blood,” said Cirilo Yupanqui at a recent demonstration in Lima. “I’m not a terrorist, as they say. I’m not a criminal. I have a formal job. Just look at how they treat us.”

Peruvian lawmakers, meanwhile, have rejected the idea of new elections, noted Al Jazeera. Castillo’s Free Peru political party lacked the votes to approve the measure.

The rebellion and the response are still in their early stages.

 

Pregnant Russian women flying to Argentina for citizenship, officials say

Published
8 hours ago

Related Topics

• Russia-Ukraine war

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

The Russian women arrive in Argentina heavily pregnant, the country's national migration agency said

By Laura Gozzi

BBC News

More than 5,000 pregnant Russian women have entered Argentina in recent months, including 33 on a single flight on Thursday, officials say.

The latest arrivals were all in the final weeks of pregnancy, according to the national migration agency.

It is believed the women want to make sure their babies are born in Argentina to obtain Argentinian citizenship.

The number of arrivals has increased recently, which local media suggests is a result of the war in Ukraine.

Of the 33 women who arrived in the Argentinian capital on one flight on Thursday, three were detained because of "problems with their documentation", joining three more who arrived the previous day, migration agency head Florencia Carignano told La Nacion.

The Russian women had initially claimed they were visiting Argentina as tourists, she said.

"In these cases it was detected that they did not come here to engage in tourism activities. They acknowledged it themselves."

She said the Russian women wanted their children to have Argentinian citizenship because it gave more freedom than a Russian passport.

"The problem is that they come to Argentina, sign up their children as Argentinean and leave. Our passport is very secure across the world. It allows [passport-holders] to enter 171 countries visa-free," Ms Carignano said.

Having an Argentine child also speeds up the citizenship process for parents. As it stands, Russians can travel visa-free to only 87 countries.

Travel to many Western countries has become more difficult for Russians since their country invaded Ukraine last February.

Last September, the visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Russia was suspended, resulting in the need for additional documentation, increased processing times and more restrictive rules for the issuing of visas.

A number of countries have also suspended tourist visas for Russians, including all EU member states that border Russia.

• Russia hands out passports in occupied cities
• Anti-war reporter recounts dramatic escape from Russia

A lawyer for the three women who were detained on Thursday said that they are being "falsely imprisoned", as they are being held on suspicion of being "false tourists". This is a term "which does not exist in our legislation," Christian Rubilar said.

"These women who didn't commit a crime, who didn't break any migratory law, are being illegally deprived of their freedom," he added.

The women have since been released.

La Nacion attributed the dramatic uptick in arrivals of Russian citizens to the war in Ukraine, saying that "besides fleeing war and their country's health service, [Russian women] are attracted by their [right of] visa-free entry to Argentina, as well as by the high-quality medicine and variety of hospitals".

"Birth tourism" by Russian citizens to Argentina appears to be a lucrative and well-established practice.

A Russian-language website seen by the BBC offers various packages for expecting mothers who wish to give birth in Argentina. The website advertises services such as personalised birth plans, airport pick-ups, Spanish lessons and discounts on the cost of stays in "the best hospitals in the Argentinian capital".

The packages range from "economy class", starting at $5,000 (£4,144), to "first class", starting at $15,000 (£12,433).

The website says its founder has been facilitating birth tourism and offering migration support since 2015, and the company says it is "100% Argentinian".

On Saturday, La Nacion reported that Argentinian police has been carrying out raids as part of an investigation into a "million-dollar business and illicit network" that allegedly provided pregnant Russian women and their partners with fake documents issued in record time to allow them to settle in Argentina.

Police said the gang charged up to $35,000 (£29,011) for the service.

No arrests were made, but police were said to have seized laptops and tablets as well as immigration papers and significant quantities of cash.

Related Topics

A Murder In Ecuador

 

ECUADOR

A mayoral candidate in Ecuador, who was gunned down hours before polls opened, won the elections in the western city of Puerto López this week, even as the murder underscores the rising tide of crime in the South American nation, the BBC reported Tuesday.

On Saturday, unknown gunmen killed Omar Menéndez, 41, after breaking into a room where he was meeting campaign workers. A teenager was also killed in the attack.

Police are investigating the possible motive behind the murder. No arrests have been made so far.

A member of Menéndez’s party is expected to take over as mayor in place of the assassinated politician.

Before Menéndez, another mayoral candidate, Julio César Farachio, was shot dead in the coastal town of Salinas. Authorities detained a suspect, who had previously served time on drug trafficking charges and had threatened Farachio.

President Guillermo Lasso condemned the murders.

The municipal elections took place as the country has seen an uptick in crime attributed to the rising influence of violent drug gangs in the Andean country.

Lasso recently proposed a series of constitutional amendments on crime which were put to a vote over the weekend.

One of the changes would allow Ecuadoreans with ties to transnational organized crime to be extradited overseas if they are facing a trial or have already been sentenced in absentia in another country.

Officials said extraditing criminals to maximum security prisons in the United States would help reduce pressure on Ecuador’s overwhelmed justice system.

Still, the proposals were defeated during the vote.

Ecuador: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

Murder, and Other Disasters

ECUADOR

Under the conservative government of President Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador’s economy grew 3.2 percent last year, inflation today is relatively low compared with the region, employers have hired 500,000 people and 750,000 fewer Ecuadorians now live in poverty.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Lasso said massive investments in “health, education, housing, employment and money transfers” to poor families helped drive that success. He admitted, however, that his crackdown on organized crime and drug trafficking has fueled a spike in violence as criminals fight back.

Murders in the South American country with its population of about 18 million increased from less than six per 100,000 people in 2016 to almost 20 last year, a record toll.

Crime is hurting the country’s waxing economic fortunes, too. Organized criminals murdered at least 63 people and injured 1,500 others last year in businesses exporting bananas, shrimp, and cacao, the basic ingredient for chocolate, Reuters reported, citing the Corporation of Ecuadorean Exporter Associations.

In an effort to defeat the criminals and keep the economy humming, Lasso is supporting a series of referendum questions that includes giving the military permission to work with police hunting down drug lords and extraditing Ecuadoran citizens accused of drug running to foreign countries (like the United States), reported the Courthouse News Service. The ballot is scheduled for Feb. 5.

Many Ecuadorans, including those leery about deploying soldiers on city streets as well as “Indigenous people, teachers and students” who have run afoul of the law during anti-government and other protests, have come out against Lasso’s referendum proposals, wrote Prensa Latina, a Cuban state-owned media outlet.

But Lasso, who is also seeking to boost Ecuador’s oil drilling to improve the economy, appears to have at least sought to satisfy some of his critics. The referendum questions offer environmentalists a new water protection system as well as conservation incentives, for example.

The eastern Amazonian regions where oil drillers are active also happen to be among the most biodiverse in the world, explained Mongabay. Locals there have long fought against oil and mining companies they say pollute land that is among the most untouched by modern society in the world.

Two Indigenous communities in Yasuní National Park, on the border with Peru, “reject contact with Western society, and live in what’s called voluntary isolation,” wrote the New York Times. These Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous groups survive in the jungle using spears, blow darts and knowledge that’s been passed down for generations.

Ecuador has long sought to balance the economic needs of its cities with the environmental protection of its remote east, Amazon Watch noted.

Lasso has to figure out how to solve his crime problem without triggering a worse disaster.